FreekStyle

More of the same, Sir?

One of the easier tricks

One assumes that there must be some sort of difference between the
words "freak" and "freek", other than a simple spelling
inconsistency. I wandered over the road to the local skate park
yesterday and asked whether anybody knew the difference, and they
had no idea, but presumably for someone, somewhere, it's a word
which holds some significance. Anyway, with that out of the
way it's time to talk about FreekStyle, the latest EA Sports BIG
game borne of the SSX formula. And oddly enough, it's a bit of a
freak.

EA Sports BIG has developed a reputation for transplanting the SSX
mechanics to other extreme sports titles, and FreekStyle is no
exception. The control system is standard, with the analogue stick
used to turn and lean back and forward in the saddle, the shoulder
buttons used in combination to perform tricks in midair, and the
face buttons used to apply acceleration, brakes and a
speed-enhancing boost. Similarly, the single player game is made up
of three-stage races and trick showcases, and as you progress you
build up your character's stats and collect new bikes to ride in
competition.

Another unsurprising tenet of FreekStyle is the game's
over-the-top presentation. Stuffed to bursting point with
aggravating skater chic, from shirtless tattoo-emblazoned youths
with bolts through their faces (which saved me the trouble) and
women in tight tops with 'attitude' to menus with fiery backgrounds
and 'freaky' button effects, it feels an awful lot like Sled Storm
and the first SSX - gritty, rough around the edges, but
deliberately so.

More of the more of the same

You get upset because you crashed, then the commentator insults you

On the track the visuals are nice, but by no means special - it
really does look like SSX on bikes. Circuits have one eagerly
repeated dirt texture, with darker shades indicating mud that slows
down your bike, and as usual you're shoehorned along but offered a
choice of different paths here and there if you're skilful enough
to run the gauntlet of their challenging shortcuts.

Tracks vary in design but often appear very similar; indeed, if you
kept your eyes on the track and riders you would hardly notice the
difference between the first two - an industrial wasteland and what
appears to be a mining facility. Things start to improve as you
work your way further in. By the third circuit, you're steaming
through burning forests as they collapse and climbing mountains (a
nice reversal of SSX behaviour made possible by the bike), but
ultimately the gameplay remains constant, and this can be a
problem.

Although it's good fun to play, you start off extremely weak. You
immediately fall to the back of the pack, and because it all moves
so swiftly compared to SSX, if you topple (which often happens as
you get used to the tricks) you're dumped to the back of the pack,
with no easy way to reclaim your position. Losing races is a
regular problem. No tutorial and an unhelpful manual leads to you
repeating the same sections over and over, and despite the length
of the courses, each race is three laps of the same circuit,
repeated three times with increasingly antagonistic AI. The first
six events in the single player campaign work like this, and you'll
end up racing the same lap as many as 15 times in most cases before
you unlock the next circuit. Without the same level of variation in
design or the docile AI on the quarter and semi-final races that
made SSX more bearable, FreekStyle quickly becomes a chore.

Ah, Freek

Jumping through fiery hoops means more points

The way to combat this is "freeking out". As with SSX Tricky,
performing and particularly combining tricks builds up your boost
meter, but it also builds up your Freek Out meter. Once full, the
little red devil's head on your HUD starts to judder incessantly,
and clutching all four shoulder buttons off a jump will switch the
game into bullet-time briefly before giving your bike a timed speed
boost. The whole screen palpitates with an impressive motion blur
effect, and you have several seconds at this high speed to get
ahead of the pack. Performing tricks here will extend the Freek Out
period instead of adding to your boost meter.

Sadly though, Freek Out is a once-per-race thing for the most
part, and if you squander it by smacking into a tree or mistiming a
jump, you've had it. Unless you can work your way up the field
through hard graft, you've got no chance, which can be a bitter
pill to swallow. Compounding your misery is the game's feeble
collision detection and the AI's improbable ability to pip you to
the post at the last second. And unlike SSX, you need to finish
first in the main event to progress - there's no gold, silver or
bronze awarded here.

What this all means is that FreekStyle feels too hard. And for one
reason or another, it has none of the grace of its infamous
sibling. This is made worse by the second set of six challenges in
the single player mode, which are trick showcases set in Tony Hawk
style arenas. This approach just does not work if you clutch onto
the SSX mechanics as FreekStyle does. It's a forced marriage of
game styles, and not a pretty one at that.

The Final Furlong

A typical trick arena

The last six races are more bearable, maddeningly, requiring you to
win while totting up a certain number of points. Fair enough, but
if you make it to this stage without giving up through sheer
frustration at the combination of repetition and other depressing
game design issues then you're a better man than I am. I wouldn't
have persisted if I didn't have to - it would have gone back to the
shop long ago.

At this stage there's no real respite from the panning for
FreekStyle. Everything starts to get on your nerves. Your character
is stronger and more able, but there's no real incentive to revisit
the earlier stages because you'll be quite sick of them. The
presentation starts to grate even more than ever, thanks to a
combination of the 'attitudes' of the riders and an annoying Yank
bellowing at you about your tricks and abilities with none of the
pizzazz of Rahzel's voiceover in SSX, not to mention the
infuriating skater music and the 'rivals' system. I'm sorry EA, but
the idea of riders gunning for one another was pretty blasť in
SSX Tricky, and it's just another nail in the coffin here. It
should have been left for dead on the roadside.

You could do a lot worse than to buy FreekStyle, as it continues
the trend of introducing BIG's successful formula to other means of
transportation with varying degrees of success. But it's more Sled
Storm than SSX Tricky, suffering from too much repetition and a
challenge that hops the fence of reason and squirms in muddy
trackside puddles of unfairness, linking arms with collision
detection that augments frustration rather than adjudicating
fairly. By no means a bad game, FreekStyle just needs rearranging,
some extra polish, and a bit more effort under the bonnet. As it
is, it's mostly talk, and it sounds like that kid with a board who
hassled you for money as you walked to the station yesterday.